A publication of the Justice Center	Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Center

See also:       > Justice Center Web Site         Abstract: An introduction to the kinds of justice and legal resources available through the Justice Center Web Site, including a page designed for conducting Alaska and national legal research. Web note: This article is included on-line as it originally appeared in print. Because URLs (World Wide Web addresses) frequently change (including the Justice Center Web Site address since this article was first published), some of the URLs provided in this article may no longer be accurate and links to outside resources have in most cases not been implemented. To get to the Justice Center Web Site's up-to-date links, see the Resource index.

     The Justice Center at University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) has opened a channel to on-line information on justice and law to anyone with access to the World Wide Web (WWW). The new Internet site is designed to act as a one-stop Internet resource for University of Alaska students, justice and legal professionals, Alaska citizens, and others concerned about justice and law in Alaska. Part of Camai, UAA's Campus-Wide Information System, the web site provides information about the Justice Center's baccalaureate and paralegal certificate programs, as well as Justice Center and Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Unit research, the complete Justice Center bibliography, and articles from the Alaska Justice Forum.
     Other resources available at the site include detailed, annotated listings, with links, of Alaska, national, and international web sites dealing with Alaska Natives and justice, corrections, the courts, crime and crime prevention, government, juvenile justice, law, law enforcement, justice legislation, and other relevant topics. A "Legal & Justice Research" page makes it possible to conduct on-line research on Alaska and federal statutory and case law. On the World Wide Web, a link can be followed simply by selecting it; this site makes hundreds of justice and legal resources throughout the world immediately available.
     A sampler of resources available through links from the Justice Center web site:

• The Alaska Court System (http://www.alaska.net/~akctlib/homepage.htm) has a page maintained by the staff of the Alaska Court Libraries, and provides recent appellate court decisions (slip opinions), Alaska Rules of Court, Alaska Court System press releases, and other resources.
• The Alaska Justice Resource Center (http://Justice.uafss.alaska.edu/). A service of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Justice Department, this site includes a Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) database based on crime data reported annually in the FBI's Crime in the United States. The UCR database comprises UCR index crime data for 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 1993, and will expand as future UCRs are published. The database includes all U.S. cities with populations of over 100,000 for years prior to 1993. Alaska cities in the database include Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau.
• The Alaska State Legislature (http://www.state.ak.us/local/akpages/LEGISLATURE/home.htm) web site includes addresses, email addresses, and information about all Alaska legislators. The legislature's Textual Infobases (http://www.legis. state.ak.us/) are word-searchable on Alaska Statutes, the Alaska Constitution, Legislative Uniform Rules, Alaska State Executive Orders, the Alaska Administrative Journal, current and previous years' legislative information (House bills and resolutions, House and Senate journals, committee minutes, and session laws and resolves), and a catalog of Legislative Research Agency memoranda (which can be ordered through Legislative Information Offices).
• Cop Net (http://police.sas.ab.ca/) is a central resource for police officers and law enforcement agencies, with links to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and other nations, as well as numerous other resources. Portions of this site are available only to sworn officers with password access; information on getting a password is provided.
• Cornell University's Legal Information Institute (http://www.law.cornell.edu/) offers recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, recent decisions of the New York Court of Appeals, the full U.S. Code, and other important legal documents.
• Hieros Gamos (http://www.hg.org/), according to its home page, provides national and international listings for "every organization, association, law school, firm, vendor, consultant, etc. directly or indirectly involved with the legal profession."
• Introduction to American Justice (http://orion.alaska.edu/~afdsw/justice.html) is an educational resource site designed by Justice Center faculty member Darryl Wood. Especially designed for students in Wood's Justice 110 "Introduction to Justice" class, this site is an interactive primer for learning about the American justice system, with comprehensive class lecture notes and pointers to resources in all aspects of the Alaska and U.S. justice systems.
• The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) (http://icpsr.umich.edu/ICPSR_ homepage.html) is a membership-based, not-for-profit, organization serving member colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. Its web site provides access to a large archive of machine-readable social science data, including the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) (http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/CJAIN/nacjd.html).
• The National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) (http://ncjrs. aspensys.com:81/1/new2/homepage.html), the most extensive source of information on criminal and juvenile justice in the world, is a collection of information clearinghouses supporting bureaus of the U.S. Department of Justice: the National Institute of Justice, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Office for Victims of Crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency. It also provides support for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
• Native Americans and the Environment (http://www.indians.org/library/) provides links and articles on environmental justice, treaties, land and water rights, and other issues related to Native Americans and the environment.
• Shattered Love, Broken Lives (http://www.ultranet.com/newstandard/projects/DomVio/domviohome.HTML) archives 60 articles, published over 11 days in the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts, based on six months of investigation into the causes of domestic violence, victims, and solutions.
• Vote Smart Web (http://www.vote-smart.org/) from Project Vote Smart is a project of the Center for National Independence in Politics, a national nonpartisan nonprofit organization focused on providing citizens/voters with information about the political system, issues, candidates, and elected officials. Vote Smart Web provides access to campaign finance data, voting records, and performance evaluations prepared by competing special interest organizations, as well as biographical backgrounds and other information on members of Congress and candidates for federal and gubernatorial offices; it is expanding to include state legislative officials and candidates.

The Justice Center web site does not replace these or any of the other over 300 links listed on its pages, but rather makes existing Internet resources on justice and law, particularly pertaining to Alaska, available in one place. It can be reached using any World Wide Web browser such as Lynx, Netscape, or Mosaic at:

Web note: The Justice Center Web Site's address has changed since this article was written to http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/.

• Like most sites on the World Wide Web, the Justice Center web site is continually "under construction." Comments and suggestions are welcome, including suggestions for additional links to justice and legal resources. Comments may be sent by email to ayjust@uaa.alaska.edu.

       Melissa Green, the publication specialist at the Justice Center, designed the Justice Center web site.

Web note: The location of Legal Research resources have changed since this article was written to http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/resources/legalresearch/index.html. Justice Research, now separate, is found at http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/resources/justiceresearch/index.html.

     A newspaper story describes a recent Alaska Supreme Court decision on a citizen's suit against the Municipality of Anchorage for false arrest and imprisonment, and you'd like to read the complete decision. Select "Legal & Justice Research" from the "Other sites" menu at the bottom of the Justice Center home page. The "Legal & Justice Research" page includes links to Alaska, federal, and other resources useful in legal and justice research. These can be reached by scrolling down or by using an internal menuing system. Select "Alaska" from the menu immediately beneath the title "Legal & Justice Research;" under "Alaska," choose the menu item "Court Decisions."
     This area of the page has links to Alaska appellate court decisions, including slip (recent) opinions and 1991-1996 decisions of the Alaska Supreme Court and the Alaska Court of Appeals, as well as decisions since June 1995 of the U.S. Ninth Circuit. Slip opinions, at a site maintained by the Alaska Court Libraries (http://www.alaska.net/~akctlib/sp.htm), are removed from the site once they are printed in Pacific Reporter, 2d, the designated official report of Alaska appellate decisions, but the decision we're looking for is recent enough that it will probably still be there. In fact, once we follow the link and start scrolling down the list of cases for those which name the Municipality of Anchorage as one of the litigants, we can easily find a possibility: a January 12, 1996 decision, Waskey v. Municipality of Anchorage. Select the link; the text of the decision appears on-screen. It is, indeed, the case we were seeking.
     But what if you didn't know that the Municipality of Anchorage was involved? There are also links to a site maintained by the Alaska Legal Resource Center (http://www.touchngo.com/lglcntr/lglcntr.htm), a top site maintained by Touch N' Go Systems and the Law Offices of James P. Gottstein. The Alaska Legal Resource Center permits searching 1991-1996 Alaska Supreme Court decisions by key words, and also includes a topical index to the decisions. From the Justice Center's "Legal & Justice Research" page, select "Search Decisions by Keyword," and you'll be presented with a field in which you can enter your search keywords: "false arrest." Hit the <Enter> key on your keyboard, and in a moment a list of decisions, linked to copies of the actual court documents, will appear on your screen. As of this writing, the topmost decision is the one we're looking for, Waskey v. Municipality of Anchorage (1/12/96); as a bonus, most of the other cases listed address the same or related issues.
     The Alaska Legislature's "infobase" of Alaska Statutes (http://www.legis.state.ak.us/folio.pgi/stattx95?), available through the same Justice Center research page, make it possible to find the exact statute governing issues of false arrest and imprisonment in Alaska. We can also research the issue at the federal level, through searchable versions of 1990-1995 U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the full U.S. Code, from Cornell University's Legal Information Institute (http://www.law.cornell.edu/), and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) from the U.S. House of Representatives Internet Law Library (http://www.pls.com:8001/his/1.htm). Other links on the research page will take us to the various federal circuit courts of appeal, and there are also links to sites that will help us locate research sites in other states.